Apology and Promises

I’m back!!

I’m sorry!!! (Sorry for not posting in so long… not sorry for being back)

I have been overwhelmed, and for the most part, ignoring the whole “You have a life-threatening chronic illness” aspect of my life. Instead, I’ve been focused on the “You’re an idiot… such an idiot… PhD?! Really?!” aspect. Fortunately that focus has paid off and I passed my qualifying exam!! I’m an official PhD Candidate!!

And what did that cost me? Infections. Apparently I get infections when stressed. Remember those bright, beautiful red streaks from nearly two years ago? Well they came back. And brought friends. Lots of friends. Those friends apparently don’t like antibiotics and become resistant around antibiotics. Fortunately, with the second round, I managed to beat the two red-streak infections I had in my feet. But then two more came back… and that’s where I’m currently at. Doctor appointment is on Monday. Wish me luck.

So that’s the apology and brief update… here’s the promise: I will add more of an in-depth update, covering more of what has been going on in the wonderful wild life of Loeys-Dietz Syndrome meets PhD insanity. I promise I won’t wait another year to post again… honest…

For The Sake of Normality

What do you do for the sake of normality? How far do you shove your reality down just to be able to claim that your life really is normal?

It does work. To a certain extent, but then reality always seems to catch up to me. Like an annoying fly that buzzes around me.

One of those annoying little flashbacks to reality happened with a cardiologist email. I had worn the heart event monitor (that I wrote about a few posts back) for a week, returned it to the doctor via postal mail, and had promptly forgotten about it. I really hadn’t cared enough to push for results like I would have done in the past. So I was pretty shocked when I got an email claiming that my monitor had caught runs of supraventriculuar tachycardia (SVT).

I wasn’t really prepared for that. It’s one thing to feel and suspect that something is getting worse, but an entirely whole other thing to be faced with the proof. My last monitor showed a hint of SVT in the form of Atrial Flutter. This one showed two runs of Atrial Tachycardia and I had only worn the monitor for a fourth of the time. My heart is definitely getting grumpier.

Little b*tch.

Oh well. I decided to ignore it until my next appointment in October. I will come up with a next step then. So I attempt to be normal…

Another interesting tid-bit that accompanies my illness, however, is the propensity for infections. This latest one clearly meant business:

Notice the red streaks? Yeah…

In less than 24hrs from when I got the blister on my toe, I had streaks of red going up towards my ankle. I was amazed. And in pain. Quite a bit of pain actually. Ouch…

There are a few times when an infection has almost turned into sepsis for me and it usually happens in the blink of an eye. One second I’m fine and I have it under control, and the next thing I know, the infection is clearly winning. This just happened to be one of those times.

The thing about rare diseases, is that it is sometimes hard to tell what is related to the disease and what is not. Loeys-Dietz is caused by a mutation in a signalling pathway that plays an important role in the immune system’s function. This means that my mutation could be the reason that I tend to get infections more easily. Or it could be totally unrelated. It’s hard to tell. This infection did earn me a course of strong antibiotics though.

Overall my life has been pretty un-exciting. Just a hint of “chronic-illness-flare” to make it seem a tad more interesting to people who lead healthier lives.

I do wish that “normal” could come a little more easily at times and I do begrudge the amount of time and effort I need to devote towards my health.

Imagine what I could have accomplished by now if I didn’t always have my health to contend with?

It almost makes me cry.

My Lose-Lose Scenario

One of the challenging aspects of having a chronic illness is the tight rein you have to keep on things. While some people may be able to get away with certain things, I can’t. I need to be careful with most of what I do and try to remain neutral, not straying too far out of the bounds of my health.

So I recently screwed up. I was careless in lab and burnt myself.

The offending culprit right after my act of lab-stupidity.

Luckily, by now, I know that “healing” isn’t my strong suit. So I put a ton of neosporin on right after I burnt myself. Covered it the next day at work with a band-aid and added even more neosporin. I thought I was doing good…

A now infected burn. Lovely. Fan-freaking-tastic.

So when the first round of at home treatment doesn’t work, I move on to the second round: Hydrogen peroxide. It’s my secret weapon. I’m really hoping it works. I would feel incredibly stupid for having done this to myself if I end up needing to go to the doctor.

But, you see, that’s the main problem. Whenever I stray from my limits and end up doing something that harms me, I feel stupid. I feel stupid for cutting myself, missing a doctor appointment, eating poorly, not getting enough sleep, not exercising properly (either too much or too little)…etc. Now, if you noticed, those are things that most people mess up with or do on a daily basis. But for most people, the consequences are less dire. A burn, like mine, on anyone else would probably have healed just fine without getting infected. But because the consequences are more dire for me, I punish myself for slipping up more so than most people would.

I’ve created a lose-lose scenario for myself.

Either I have no maneuverability in my life, or I call myself stupid.

So I’m going to start punishing myself less for making mistakes. I am going to stop thinking less of myself for doing a stupid thing when my progressing illness decided to raise the stakes on me without letting me know. I’ll just take care of the problem and try to do better next time.